I'm Back...

It's been about 8 months since I last updated this thing. A lot has happened since then. I'm at university now at the University of Cape Town studying mainly Maths and Physics, although with one of my electives I'm doing a couple of Computer Science. The traditional computer science course is Java, but this year their running a first semester only, test course on Python for all those familiar with Java.

Things have been going well, although some of the lecturers are completely hopeless at explaining things. Especially in our Modelling course where we have to learn to model in Matlab. The only problem is that he goes too fast for people who have never used a computer before or have had very little experience(of which there are quite a lot, probably the majority) and too slow for anyone who has programmed in anything before. He also spents ages on things that are intuitive and everyone grasps and then goes on to glance over really difficult things. *sigh* Oh well.

Our second term project for Python was very interesting. It was a Battleships game. It was split up into three parts: the server, the client and the AI client. Doing each was an 'experience' to say the least. At the end we had a tournament of our AI's. I came 8th out 10 contestants. The main 'thing' about my AI was not its AI abilities, but rather it's ability to have pluggable AI using dynamic importing. By the way, to anyone thinking of doing 3D graphics in Python: DO NOT USE THE VISUAL MODULE. It's hopelessly slow and the GUI is buggy and isn't very good for building UI's on top of it.

It's near the end of the first semester so we're currently in the middle of mid-year exams. I've only got two more left to write as of writing this. After that I'll have 6 weeks of free time. I plan on taking a small trip for a few days to a game reserve or safari or something. I also plan on doing work on my 4E5 entry. That's right I'm entering the 4E5 competition. So far I haven't decided on exactly what to do. Right now I'm going back and forth between RPG and RTS.

Before I knew about 4E5, I had originally intended to work on an RTS. Well, space-RTS so I didn't have much in the way of graphics for land and stuff like that. In fact. I'd say space games are the easiest to make graphics for. Spaceships can be the easiest models to make(EG: Battle of the Borg!), but I'm guessing its also probably the hardest to make good models for. There are a couple of flaws in current RTS game idea as well so I think I probably won't be doing RTS.

My other idea, the RPG, is graphically-based on Betrayal at Krondor. The game would have the same sort of look and feel. There would be a great deal more 2D graphics than 3D graphics which I feel more confident with. I'm pretty sure I've got all the E's over here. Well, almost all of them. I've just got to think think of a way to incorporate emotion into the story.